EU says Indonesia has further to go on air safety
BANDUNG, Indonesia – Indonesia has not yet made enough progress improving air safety for the European Union to lift a ban on the Southeast Asian nation’s airlines, the EU’s air safety chief said on Monday.A string of deadly disasters involving Indonesian airlines in recent years has raised questions about safety standards and led to the European ban last June on all 51 of the country’s airlines, including national carrier Garuda Indonesia.
‘Indeed we were glad to note that progress has taken place, but unfortunately it was not sufficient yet,’ Roberto Salvarani told a conference in Bandung on aviation safety organised by the European Commission and the Indonesian transport ministry.
He was referring to the results of a review made by EU officials who visited Jakarta in November.
No Indonesian airlines currently fly to EU member states, but some plan to and the ban is also a threat to the local tourism sector since it obliges tourist agencies to warn customers that Indonesian airlines are unsafe if they sell package tours that use such carriers.
Indonesian Transport Minister Jusman Syafi’i Djamal conceded that some airlines had put profit before safety, describing a series of accidents as ‘a wake up call to the Indonesian people’.
But he rejected suggestions that his country was in denial over problems in the aviation sector and denied Indonesia was involved in ‘political drumbeating’ to overturn the ban.
‘Indonesia is not the barbarian at the gate. We do not want to kill our people. Accidents can happen even under a good regulator, good operators and good airplanes,’ he said.
He later told reporters that the government was proposing to the European Union to lift the ban on four of the 51 Indonesian airlines on the blacklist in the first phase.
These airlines were Garuda, privately-run Mandala Airlines and two charter companies, he said.
Garuda, which stopped flying to Amsterdam in 2004 because the route was not profitable, wants to fly to Europe again to benefit from a recovery in tourism.
Salvarani said the EU ban on Indonesian airlines could be lifted ‘when all the implementing measures that are still pending would be successfully completed and evidence of that fulfilment would be made available to Europe’.
The European Union would not cave in to any political or diplomatic pressure, he said.
In March last year, a Garuda aircraft crashed at Yogyakarta airport in Java, killing 21 people. A transport safety committee report said the pilot of the plane ignored 15 warnings as he descended too rapidly.
That crash came after a plane belonging to budget carrier Adam Air crashed into the sea off Sulawesi island in January. All 102 on board are presumed dead.
Air travel in Indonesia has blossomed since the liberalisation of the sector in 1999, but the rapid growth has raised questions over whether safety has been compromised.
(Editing by Ed Davies)
Source: http://www.signonsandiego.com/
Add comment January 22nd, 2008